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Bonus Cash: In this Sept. 24, 2013, file photo, just cut stacks of $100 bills make their way down the line at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth, Texas.(Photo: LM Otero, AP)

More than three dozen of the biggest American companies have shared their tax-cut windfalls with employees, mostly through one-time bonuses but also with hourly wage increases and bigger 401(k) matches following the new tax law passed in December.

The latest big names to say they will share some of the financial benefits from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with workers are package delivery giant FedEx and Honeywell, an industrial company. On Friday, FedEx said it was boosting employee compensation by $200 million, two-thirds going to wage increases for hourly workers and the rest to performance-based incentive plans. Honeywell said it would boost its 401(k) match.

These announcements follow similar moves by employers such as Home Depot, Walmart and Walt Disney.

Overall, the new tax law, which slashed the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, is seen boosting the profitability of large U.S. companies by an additional 8% this year, according to Credit Suisse.

As of Friday, at least 39 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index — comprising 500 of the nation's largest companies — have said they are providing additional financial rewards to workers, citing benefits from the new tax law, according to a USA TODAY analysis of corporate press releases and company statements, as well as other forms of publicly available communications tracked by multiple sources, including Americans for Tax Reform, FactSet and S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Two dozen of the companies are paying cash bonuses, four are issuing bonuses in company stock, and another is adding to its performance-based bonus pool. Another eight are lifting wages and three are boosting the company's 401(k) match. Some are paying bonuses and giving raises. Combined, these companies represent 7.8% of the S&P 500.

USA TODAY's research estimates that more than 1.3 million U.S. workers will receive either cash or stock-based bonuses totaling an estimated $1.7 billion or more. Still, the bonuses announced so far by large S&P 500 companies are quite small compared with the total compensation — wages, salaries and benefits — of $10.3 trillion paid by U.S. companies last year, according to the Department of Commerce.

Overall, S&P 500 companies are expected to pay an estimated $75 billion to $100 billion less in taxes in 2018 compared with last year, according to Credit Suisse.

While getting an extra $1,000 check is welcome, employees would have been better off had more companies boosted their pay as wage gains are permanent, economists say.

"Obviously a bonus is a one-time event paid without consideration of employee performance, providing only a temporary lift," says Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com.

What's more, a bonus will do little to close the wage gap between workers and CEOs. In 2016, S&P 500 CEO's earned a median $11.5 million in compensation from salary, bonus, stock and other compensation, up 8.5% from the prior year, according to a study by executive data firm Equilar for The Associated Press. CEOs earned 347 times what the average worker did in 2016, according to the AFL-CIO's Executive Paywatch study.

"It's a drop in the bucket," says Nick Sargen, chief economist at Fort Washington Investment Advisors, a money-management firm in Cincinnati. "Companies are doing it mainly as a PR gesture. It looks good that they are sharing a portion, however small, of the corporate tax cuts."

More bonus announcements are likely, but workers shouldn't get too excited over the prospect of coming pay hikes, adds Edward Yardeni, president & chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research.

Companies, he says, are unlikely to boost wages because they remain cost-conscious in a tight labor market, are focused on maintaining profit margins and are still mindful and fearful of the fallout from the Great Recession nearly a decade ago.

"Workers won't see many wage increases," says Yardeni, adding that "if all these corporations were coming back with wage increases (rather than bonuses), it would have more substantial impact on consumers."

Whether the steady stream of news touting bonuses or pay increases will continue will depend on the "performance of the economy" and the businesses themselves, Bankrate.com's Hamrick adds.

Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco, says most of the announcements about profit-sharing with workers will come in the first three months of 2018. "Then the announcements will die down," he says.

Here's a list of S&P 500 companies, citing the tax-cut as a motivation, that have announced "bonus" payouts to workers. (The list does not include companies that are giving pay raises or 401(k) boosts.